


nothing ever severed

by WhiteJackal



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Hurt Shiro (Voltron), M/M, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Shiro (Voltron) Needs a Hug, Shiro (Voltron)-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-28 07:38:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16237136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiteJackal/pseuds/WhiteJackal
Summary: the whispers that never leave.OR, shiro and his constant companions, for better or for worse.





	nothing ever severed

**Author's Note:**

> some flashes of shiro's past. a lot of rooted ptsd. a lot of broken soldier.

The pits finished for the day, they thought little of tossing him back to his cell. It was dark and loud and cold in the cells, and Shiro hung between the Galra sentries, emotionless and voiceless and thoughtless, like a marionette cut from his strings. 

_ Am I better than a broken toy?  _

He shook his head, blinking at the blood in his left eye, hot and red from the cut through his forehead and hairline.  _ I can’t think like that. I won’t make it if I think like that. _ He had to believe his humanity would hold out, had to hang onto the sanity and decency of Earth and all he’d been, if he ever wanted to survive. 

_ Whatever’s left of me has got to get home.  _

He thought of Adam. He thought of Matt. He thought of Sam. He thought of Earth itself, full of innocents who knew nothing of the Galra and their ever-growing, ever-reaching, never-satisfied empire. 

He thought of Keith. 

_ They can’t take them from me. Not really.  _

But they  _ had _ taken Matt and Sam (he’d not seen Sam since their first day of capture, and they’d taken Matt away that first day they were set to fight in the pits), and Adam and Earth were so far away. 

_ And Keith…  _

 

He blinked. The sentries stopped, and they stopped before his cell. Shiro listened for any telltale sounds or signs of trouble ahead. Escape attempts and prison riots were few and far between among Galra slaves, but the cells held enough pit fighters, gladiators stained with blood and fueled with rage and red-hot survival, to cause occasional distractions and diversions for the Galra guards and mechanized sentries. 

_ No blasters. No shouts. _ Nothing but the usual silence of the cells: drips of condensation from above, muffled steps and cheers from the pits behind them, and scattered, barely-muffled whimpers from not-quite-broken prisoners and slaves. 

_ Why are we stopping? _ Shiro looked up through blurry and bloody sight towards the faceplates of the sentries. He knew better than to ask questions of them. They’d never answer with anything but a computerized scold and harsh shock or blow. The Galra were no different, though their answers and tones at least varied. And at least  _ they _ looked at him like he was a living being, slave though he was. 

_ Breathing, thinking slave is better than senseless, meaningless weapon or accessory.  _

Non-sentient tech though they were, Shiro wished they’d just look at him. Just once. Just sometimes. Just enough to remind him he wasn’t dead. 

_ Worthless, nameless, and lifeless to them.  _

 

_ Slave _ , a voice sneered in his mind, with booming laughs of cruel opponents from the pits and gleeful eyes of his brutal captors. 

 

“Ta… Tak-kashi… Shiro… Shirog-gane,” he whispered beneath his breath, face downwards towards the blurred floor. 

The sentries turned to face the wall to what had been Shiro’s left, their inhuman strength continuing to hold him aloft, one leg twisted unnaturally beneath him. 

 

“Feb… F-February twenty-nine…”  _ My birthday. Here and gone. _

Clicking and whirring sounded, and Shiro felt some of his dead-weight lilt towards the right as the sentry on his left side fiddled with the controls above Shiro’s head. 

 

“Sept-tember fourteen…”  _ Adam’s birthday. We went stargazing last year with Keith and the antique land-rovers Matt’s mom is always restoring. We sat quiet and happy while Keith kicked up mountains of dust. _ He smiled a little now, eyes shutting and mind blissfully escaping to the memory.  _ That was a good day…  _

The doors slid open, and a rush of cold swept over Shiro’s body. He could see the bright of the purple light within the chamber even from behind his eyelids. 

 

“October… f-four…?” His brow furrowed, correcting his own failing, flickering memory. “No… n-no...  _ s-seven _ .” The day he met Keith. He squeezed his eyes shut even tighter to see him as he’d been that day: sulky to everyone else, but nothing aside from sad and secluded and cast-aside to Shiro, looking at nothing but the outdoors, ripping his way through the simulations Shiro brought like he’d been born to the task. Shiro smiled again.  _ What a kid.  _

The sentries proceeded inside the doors. The muffled, incoherent (he hit his head harder than he remembered) voices and crackling energy inside the frigid chamber stood every hair on his body on edge. A dull thud of fear swirled in his stomach. He was too tired to be well and truly afraid -- too broken and hulled-out to focus or care or listen. 

 

 

Not when they strapped him to the table. 

 

Not when the witch drew near. 

 

Not when he screamed and sobbed as heat and cold and shock shot through his right arm. 

 

 

He’d blink later, and he’d be back in his cell. He’d blink again, and he’d look down. He’d blink once more, and he’d see what they’d done: what they’d taken and replaced. 

 

 

Of everything he’d whispered, he only remembered his name after that day. 

His name, and the purple, and the screaming, and the witch. 

 

 

He’d blink, months and months, and the arm never let him forget what he wanted to forget. 

 

_ Slave _ , he’d hear all over again.  _ Ours.  _

 

 

_ ‘PARTNER _ ,’ Black whispered in his ear. He knew when the sneers came calling for Shiro, even in the heat of battle or most quiet of peacefulness in the Castle of Lions. 

 

 

Shiro smiled.  _ The Black Lion: his partner.  _

 

He’d hear those whispers, his friend’s reassurance and sureness, even after their bond released. 

 

 

Never severed. 

 

Nothing ever really severed. 

 

_ For better and for worse.  _

 

**Author's Note:**

> i'm pretty sure this is relatively incoherent, but i have just recently binged the entirety of "voltron" this weekend, and shiro is everything. he deserves better, and his trauma and ptsd deserves more attention. i plan to write more on this subject -- probably something a bit more substantial and long-form -- as well as lots of other "voltron" pieces. but here's the start of my "voltron" craze! let me know what you think.


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